


Howl

by Cynder2013



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Dragons, Gen, Injury Recovery, Past Identity Reveal, Werewolves, Witches, supportive miracuclass
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-28
Updated: 2020-08-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:13:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26163193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cynder2013/pseuds/Cynder2013
Summary: After nearly dying, Juleka has to deal with her new normal. Luckily, she's got friends who will help her.
Relationships: Juleka Couffaine/Rose Lavillant
Comments: 6
Kudos: 18





	Howl

Juleka was a werewolf for twenty-four hours before she found out about it. To be fair, she had been unconscious for most of that time.

She woke up in a hospital bed with Rose crying over her. Kim and Alix were standing by the door and failing to look like professional knights instead of worried friends. Her head was fuzzy from pain potions, which explained why the first thing she said was “Akuma?”

Rose shook her head and struggled to get words out through her sobs. Alix and Kim gave up on being the least bit professional. Kim hugged Rose while Alix briefed Juleka on what had happened. The serial killer that Paris’s knights and Team Miraculous had been chasing for months had attacked Juleka and Rose on the deck of the _Liberty_. Juleka thought that she remembered that. She and Rose had gone on deck to moonbathe while the _Liberty_ was in the middle of the Seine. They should have been safe there, but then there were red eyes and sharp teeth and pain.

“Ladybug caught him,” Alix said. “Chat Noir almost ripped his throat out, but we’ve got him in lockup now.”

Juleka let out a slow breath. “He’s a werewolf, isn’t he?”

Alix and Kim looked at each other. Neither of them were telepaths, but they communicated in the silent way that their collège class had perfected after the first months of akuma attacks. Juleka couldn’t see enough of their faces to be sure of what they were saying.

“I’m sorry,” Alix said.

“We can put a cage in my house if one won’t fit on your boat,” Kim offered. Alix slapped the back of his head. “Ow! What was that for?”

“Not a good time, Kim,” Alix said.

“It’s okay,” Juleka said. The room did a sudden can-can and she squeezed her eyes shut until it stabilized. She still felt like what she imagined people who lived on land did when they were on boats. Whatever potions she had in her system were not helping.

“Should we get a physician?” Kim asked.

Juleka gave a half-groan, half-whine that meant “I feel terrible, please leave me alone and/or get help” and almost immediately heard the door closing. When she pried her eyes open, she saw that Alix had left the room at waywalker super speed and Rose and Kim were staring at her with alarm. She hadn’t sounded that bad, had she?

The physician found internal bleeding, so apparently she had sounded that bad. She took a potion to fix it, but her new werewolf physiology meant that regular strength potions wouldn’t always totally work on her so an apprentice physician had to be in her room monitoring her. That meant that Rose, Alix and Kim couldn’t keep giving her details. The apprentice didn’t want any of them to talk. The apprentice didn’t want Rose to sit next to Juleka and hold her hand, but Kim shifted his eyes and vocal cords and facing a growling one hundred and ninety centimetres tall man with gleaming cat eyes was enough to make the apprentice back down. They could have fought the silence rule too, but their class held a lot of sensitive information that it was better not to risk spilling to an outsider. They couldn’t put up privacy spells with the apprentice in the room.

Juleka kept slipping in and out of consciousness without warning. Rose stayed with her, but the rest of her visitors changed. She fell asleep that evening with Alix and Kim there and then woke up to noon with Luka sitting on her other side and a vase of cheery yellow roses from Adrien on the bedside table. She closed her eyes for a second and then Alix was back with Anarka in tow. All of Juleka’s friends and family passed through her hospital room over the next week. Even Luka’s mentor Jagged Stone made an appearance, with his dragon Fang poking his head in through the window and Penny sharing commiserating looks with Juleka and Rose while her boyfriend talked about a million different things at breakneck pace.

The physicians sent Juleka home when werewolf physiology kicked in and the pieced together flesh of her body went through months of healing right before their eyes. She still had to stay in bed because having most of her skin, bones and internal organs shredded was something that even a full-grown werewolf would have to take time to recover from and she was just a baby wolf (as Kim had taken to calling her). It wasn’t too bad. She had time to go through the work emails that had piled up while she was in hospital. Chloé had made sure that her name was kept out of the news about the full-moon murders, so when she was feeling up to it she could go out on deck without worrying about being swarmed by the press.

The stream of visitors slowed but didn’t stop. Alix and Kim stopped by every day after work, and Max and Markov all but moved in when Juleka mentioned her boredom in the class group chat so they could play games while Max worked on the new program he was writing. Markov usually won, which was kind of a given since they mostly played video games and the little robot was ninety percent technomagic.

Five days after she went home, Juleka’s visitors were unexpected ones. Rose was already asleep when there was a knock on their door. Juleka sent a thread of magic to make the door appear to light up. Anyone even tangentially related to their class (and not a horrible person cough Gabriel Agreste cough) would know that meant “Come in.”

Luka pushed the door open. “You okay to talk?”

Juleka looked at Rose, who was sprawled across her (their) bed. Rose had been having a hard time sleeping since the full moon. She didn’t want to wake her.

“Living room,” Juleka said softly.

Luka nodded. Juleka carefully got up from her chair and made her way out to the living room. She was concentrating on staying upright and putting one foot in front of the other, so it took her longer that it usually would to notice how many people were there. Nino and Alya were lounging on the couch, Nino half asleep on Alya’s shoulder. Adrien was lying with his eyes closed on the floor underneath the floating point of sunlight Juleka had made for him during collège. If she listened carefully, Juleka could hear him purring. Marinette had her sketchbook out and was drawing something with a red pencil. The kwamis were holding court on the ottomans with plates of food. The only members of Team Miraculous who weren’t there were Chloé and Kagami. When Juleka came into the room, her friends all stopped what they were doing and looked at her with serious expressions.

“Is something wrong?” Juleka asked.

“Not exactly,” Marinette said. “Adrien, Alya, are the privacy spells working?”

Alya rolled her eyes. “You know they are, girl. Get on with it.”

Juleka and Luka sat down next to Marinette. Marinette smiled at them before reaching into her purse and pulling out a little wooden box that only took Juleka a second to recognize.

It was a Miraculous box.

Marinette held the box that presumably contained one of the most powerful magical objects in the world out to Juleka. “This is the Dog Miraculous. We’ve talked it over with the kwamis and we’re sure that if you use it it’ll give you more control over your transformations. Legally you’ll still need a cage but you won’t have to worry about...accidents.”

All of them, even the kwamis, went silent.

“Juleka getting attacked wasn’t an accident,” Adrien said. “Some people want to make the world burn.”

Marinette put a hand on Adrien’s shoulder. “I know, minou.”

Juleka looked at the box. She looked at Sass, who had left his seat beside Plagg to hover next to Luka.

“You’ll like Barkk,” Sass said. “It’ll be nice to have another kwami on board.”

“You say that like Plagg, Tikki and Longg aren’t here all the time,” Juleka murmured.

Sass smiled.

“Do you want it?” Marinette asked.

Juleka picked up the box. She took a deep breath and opened it.


End file.
